


a share in the moon

by actualromeo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Possession, Self-Mutilation, canon-typical eye mutilation, i suppose i could also mention the mild elias/wright(jonah) that got him into this whole mess, original elias bouchard!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualromeo/pseuds/actualromeo
Summary: Elias Bouchard opens his eyes.Which is sort of a weird statement. It’s not like it’s the first time Elias has opened his eyes.(this time, they aren't his.)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	a share in the moon

**Author's Note:**

> whats up i Can Not get this fic right for the life of me. the sensible thing to do is to wait a little while and take another look but instead im impulsively posting it to see how i feel later

Elias Bouchard opens his eyes.

Which is sort of a weird statement. It’s not like it’s the first time Elias has opened his eyes. Still, though, they open, darkness peeling back to an ornate ceiling.

It’s not his ceiling. He recognizes it vaguely, but can’t place it. This is a fact that he just sort of… registers. Processes with clarity but no feeling or understanding as his chest rises and falls. He knows, more than feels, that he’s still breathing, even though it’s the only thing he’s doing.

After a long moment of this, Elias gets a faint sense that maybe something is, like, wrong?

Without any warning, Elias sits up. Sat up? He doesn’t really realize it’s happening until he’s already there, sitting on a large bed and looking into the equally ornate bedroom that the ceiling is attached to. Rich mahogany furniture and lots of weird shit on the shelves. Kind of tacky, honestly, but the material value was definitely there. He’s mid yawn by the time he realizes he’s even yawning, gaping chest and popping ears. Then he’s standing, just as suddenly as he was sitting before.  _ Ah, yeah _ , he notes idly, watching as his body walks to the door without his input.  _ Something is definitely wrong here _ .

He gives a cursory attempt at stopping, standing still, but he kind of knows it won’t work, even as he tries it. The rest is his body is weirdly numb, which is probably another thing wrong, it seems. There’s almost no… input from his senses. Distant sounds of running water. A feeling like… a memory of being cold. A terrible poet describing what cotton mouth is. Huh.

In the mirror, his own face stares back at him. He’s not certain what he’s doing in this bathroom, or how he got there, but his body certainly seems to be running just fine on it’s own. Steadier hands than Elias usually has are reaching up with a comically small brush, and.. combing Elias’ facial hair. Which he didn’t have the last time he looked in the mirror. Usually he shaved; it never grew in thick enough for him to bother trying an actual beard, but it looks alright, which is pretty cool? It would probably be more cool if Elias knew what the hell was going on. He starts to furrow his brows instinctively, but his actual eyebrows don’t so much as twitch. Even his confusion is weird and faint, like an actor doing a terrible job. It feels clean. He feels clean.

It takes a little while for Elias to really do anything about it, because it’s easier to just watch. His hands take him through an elaborate skin care routine, which is sort of amusing, and he just sits back and lets himself go through it for a while. The confusion is still there, though, and he sort of.. aches. Elias has never been tied up before, but he imagines this weird auto-pilot must feel something like that. Sure, he’s physically moving, but everything he actually wants to do is cut off before it can even begin, and it creates a weird restlessness inside of him. He knows he has the ability to understand, if only he looks. A lock he can break open if he chooses.

The comparisons are a little too weird to bother with, honestly, but it’s like a gap he can look through, or a button he can press, with the knowledge that he won’t ever get to take it back.

That should probably be a bad sign?

It should also probably be a bad sign that, as soon as he does Look, it  _ hurts _ . Then the comparisons start to look a little more appealing. It hurts like a blunt force, a wrecking ball, directly to the face, with sharp pricks of pain where the cartilage has been destroyed. The dull throb of pulling teeth coupled with the shots of bright pain when they finally snap away. He asked for something and it gave a bit more than he could handle, whatever information he’s recalling being whited out by the pain. It feels like he’s gripping a live wire, muscles jumping and skittering and trying to fold in on themselves-- he should be screaming, collapsing to the ground, but his  _ body _ is fine. Carefully still, now, but fine.

When the goddamn agony starts fading, some of the information he’d requested starts filling in. Nothing particularly useful, of course, but instead the memory of kneeling in a pool of blood and trying to scream. A sensible and yet obnoxiously lavish office that you couldn’t stop making jokes about, stained red. A knife swallowing your vision til it digs into the cornea. Your hands shaking, silent as something warm spills over the blade and onto your fingers. Tears? Blood?

Elias jerks back. He can’t un-See, can’t go back from his choice to know, but he can stop gripping the live wire of the sight, dragging himself with a shaky breath back to his own body. One hand moves up to his face, cupping the eye he’d just seen himself rip apart, and mid-motion he realizes that he’d just used his hand, intentionally. Auto-pilot overridden. With that knowledge, he takes a couple of shaking breaths and steps back from the counter, sinking to the ground by the large tub. 

Cold against him, the floor almost burns, his whole body hot and flushed with terror. Something about him had been dulled before, and whatever choice he’d made brought it back.

The reality of the last couple of minutes comes to him with a hysterical bark of laughter, the hand not clinging to his perfectly intact eye grabbing for the rug nearby, just to feel the sensation. 

This is some fucked up new high he’s managed-- it has to be, and he’s gonna have to interrogate Albert about what strain he’s selling now. Christ, he’d numbed out entirely, practically a stranger in his own body. He hadn’t even considered that it was weird that he wasn’t even moving consciously, just walking across the room. Hadn’t considered that he  _ couldn’t _ move consciously.

A special sort of horror rises in his chest, knowing something had the power to puppet him, had the power to have him not care. Not even notice. Something sensible in him, something that is screaming and terrified, acknowledges that this probably isn’t the weed. A bad high doesn’t explain the weeks worth of facial hair or the vaguely familiar flat he’s woken up in. No high could paralyze him inside himself. But that’s something for a future Elias to contend with, swallowing back the fear and climbing to his feet, trying to get a grasp on reality. Something smells painfully salty, and he’s only wearing a robe-- soft and small, tight around Elias’ shoulders and chest. The taste of leftover alcohol is in his mouth. Whiskey.

He doesn’t even like whiskey.

For a second, the ocean’s worth of terror hiding just beneath the surface rears its ugly head, provoked by the dumbest possible thing. Then he doesn’t feel it anymore, like the floor was tugged out from under him. 

In the mirror, he watches his body still, breaths calming from the creaking, ragged things Elias had been gasping before. He’s back in the passenger's seat of his own body. The terror isn’t as consuming without his heart racing in reaction but it’s still there, holding everything he is.

Frozen again, he’s finally forced to confront, with the whole of his mind, that maybe,  _ maybe _ this isn’t the weed. He must have touched something in Artifact Storage that gave him ghosts. Or Gertrude got too pissed at him for wandering into the Archives and put a curse on him, or something. Those are the tamer possibilities that cross his mind as he tries to move his mouth, to ask whatever’s haunting him to  _ stop, please _ \--

Instead what comes out is: “Elias.” It’s so smug that he’s honestly too irritated to be afraid for a second. In the mirror, he’s totally unfamiliar. It’s still him, obviously, but the set to his shoulders is hard and his posture is better than he’s had it since prep school. It feels like there’s a vice-grip on his very being, and that’s very much enough for Elias to remember fear.

His mouth is grinning. It’s an imperfect copy of a mean, arrogant smile that he wears a lot, like baring teeth. It makes his coworkers sneer and leave him alone, which is the goal. It’d made his parents sigh, which was also the goal. 

It had made James Wright laugh. Elias remembers that, suddenly, because it had definitely not been the goal. The thing using his mouth catches this thought, or  _ something _ , because it says, “Very clever, Elias,” and manages to utterly defile his name with how gross he says it. Honestly, the situation is absurd, and he gets caught between being grossed out, terrified, and laughing, high and manic. Of course, he can’t. He can’t move.

Whatever is holding him seems to be staring expectantly, but Elias really doesn’t know what it wants, mind blank and boggling. “Hm,” the thing moving his mouth says, on the verge of being disappointed. “Not so clever.”

That patronizing ooze is so familiar that the dumbest fucking thought appears in Elias’ idiot brain, but he can’t hold it back.

_ Mr. Wright? _

The body laughs, and he notices for the first time that his eyes are a pale green. That’s… new. Alarming. Terrible. What the fuck? “There we go,” says the thing in his body. His voice is decently low, but the thing drags it down to a register that just sounds strange coming from his mouth. “For a minute there I thought that you might not get it.”

Elias has a very, very long moment where he just thinks:  _ what the fuck. _

His nose wrinkles in the mirror. “Thank you for the insight,” says, uh-- Mr. Wright?  _ (what--)  _ Wright hums to himself, looking disgustingly pleased with Elias’ features. 

Despite the situation, Elias can’t help but wonder if he always looks like this much of a jackass. “Yes, you really do,” says Mr. Wright, and he knows the man is right, but hey! “It’s cute, though,” he tacks on.

Elias just lapses into silence, struck dumb by how weird the whole situation is. The thing that is apparently Mr. Wright, Head of the fucking Magnus Institute, Elias’ boss’ boss’ boss, continues to get ready for work, heedless to Elias. He takes a soft towel and gently wipes away the briny slime congealing on his-- their? cheeks, which looks a bit too thick to be tears. He’s not really watching, too busy considering what’s happening, but he is looking. He has to. They’re  _ his _ eyes. “Not anymore,” hums Wright, taking a comb to Elias’ hair.

His eyes are trained on the comb and his hair, and Elias can’t help but fixate on it. Why does Wright even own this comb? It’s thin toothed, good for Elias’ hair, but Wright didn’t have Elias’ hair. This thing wouldn’t get half a centimeter through Wright’s thick, trimmed curly hair. The comb has to be Wright’s, this is  _ his  _ house, which he remembers because--

Oh Christ.  _ You fuck your boss one time, _ Elias thinks wildly, _ and he steals your body-- _

“I didn’t steal it. You agreed to the promotion,” says Wright, levelly. “And it wasn’t  _ one time _ .” The offense in his voice makes a hysterical laugh bubble up in Elias’ chest, incredulous enough to actually make it out of his mouth. Realizing how close he is to regaining control over his own goddamn body, Elias makes a frantic snatch for it, something surging in his chest.

He gets the distinctive feeling he’s facing another choice he can’t come back from, and reaches anyway.

And, just like before, the flood of information is intense. The pain, though, is over, so instead he remembers. Not that he’d really forgotten concrete things, but everything before the sudden takeover of his body felt like distant stories.

For the most part, he remembers Wright. The sudden interest the man had taken in him, the break room chats when Wright happened to be stopping by, checking in on various branches. The glowing performance review, despite Elias definitely not working hard enough to earn it. The way Wright had started to meet him outside when he’d leave work, smiling brightly every time he noticed Elias, who always seemed to be arriving somewhere just a few moments after Wright. 

The-- touching. Claps on the shoulder, a hand on his side, fingers at his jaw to tilt his head up. Elias isn’t  _ that _ short, but Wright had been taller. 

The mentoring, the prodding on Elias’ health, the showering of gifts and even paying for a hospital visit that one time. Elias crashed at Wright’s flat after the man had taken him to a professional dinner, some event to build connections for his career, and Elias had even pretended to be interested. He’d woken up in Wright’s bed the next morning, the man’s knuckles tracing carefully across Elias’ cheeks with a worrying smile on his face. Possibly against his better judgement, he’d preened under the touch, and, ah, lord. Elias’ sex life (his social life, really) had been more than a little dead. Who would he have been to refuse?

He remembers the weeks immediately afterward, too. The way his consciousness started to slip in and out, little blackouts. They’d started slowly, like,  _ when had he gotten up to take his break? _ Then grew larger:  _ oh fuck, what _ day _ is it? _

Then, the unending suspicion that it might have somehow been Wright, and the decision that he was just being weird and paranoid. Wright wrinkled his nose at the term, but what could his new sugar daddy have done? Given him an occult STD that made him lose time? Wright had promised him a promotion, after all, and he wasn’t going to ruin it over some weird stress breakdowns. For a while, he’d just told himself he’d go off the weed like Wright had been wanting anyway, but that was never going to happen.

He remembers standing in Wright’s office, feeling the pull of the black and scrambling to know,  _ begging  _ to stay there. The feeling of something breaking as, suddenly, the lights came on. No more black. He’d watched, distant but present, as his own body stepped across the room to his desk. Mr. Wright was sat in his chair per usual, but slumped-- tired and scared and frazzled, and didn’t resist as Elias hands wrapped around his throat. Something, someone inside of him had relished in that fear, a heady exhilaration. Elias-- or, Wright, whatever was  _ in Mr. Wright--  _ strangled him to death, fetched a curved knife from the table, and carefully pried the eyes out of his limp body. His hands were wet with blood and tears, by the time he was finished, sticky and unclean. Wright’s eyes were pale green, with hints of the color bleeding into his sclera, and laying on a small tray as he-- it-- raised the bloody knife to his own eyes, and slit them open. Not out, just open. Cut into fourths so that his now-trembling hands could slot Wright’s eyes in place over them, forcing some of the slick gel that had once been Elias’ eyes out of the socket.

For a long minute Elias doesn’t even realize he’s back, standing in the bathroom and breathing heavily. For the first time he really registered Wright’s consciousness right there with him, roiling irritably. The body stills and he can feel himself losing control, but he’s too busy reeling to care. Busy processing the months of memory, his newfound possession, and the knowledge that hey, that briny stuff coming from his eyes a minute ago was the  _ remnants of his shredded eyeballs slowly leaking out _ , actually! 

The body hums, finishing up in the bathroom. “Interesting having a host who’s still conscious. Fun little gift The Eye has given you.” Wright says it conversationally, but Elias feels the territorial anger under the surface, the angry clench of his own jaw. “I suppose for both of our ease, you should call me by my real name. Jonah, Jonah Magnus. Of course, I’m going to need you to be quiet either way.”

And, stunned, Elias is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> on another note. i love the concept of og elias and i'm ready to get all my headcanons jossed to fuck this season


End file.
